Joel Schalit

Thinking Ahead

When I first began working in publishing, it was the mid-1990s. The ‘zine explosion was already well underway, and the first web periodicals (such as Bad Subjects) were just starting to build the first substantial online readerships. Conversely, in the world of books, traditionally academic, non-fiction publishers such as Verso were beginning to chalk up serious successes with crossover political titles, such as journalist Doug Henwood’s legendary Wall Street.  For the intellectual left, it was a time of immense creativity and ferment.

Compared to the past, according to the headlines, all we currently have to offer is a culture of continuous crises and closures. Music consumption is at an all time low, magazines and newspapers (both in print and online) point to dwindling (and, to be quite frank, aging) readerships, and book publishers keep issuing reports of mounting losses. After my new book is done, one of the things I would definitely like to explore is writing a cultural history of this period. Say, 1989-2009.

Bass Materialism: Grievous Angel Presents Dubstep Sufferah Volume 3
 

Introducing Raster

This is Raster. He’s a three-year old miniature schnauzer. Abandoned by his owners, I found him in a cage at our dog groomers’ office last May. We adopted him not long thereafter.

Three weeks ago, Raster started licking his left paw on a more-than-regular basis. As the days progressed, he’d attack a particular, nondescript spot with increasing intensity.

Eventually, Jennifer and I became concerned, and decided to take Raster to the vet, where, after shaving his paw, the doctor discovered two deep, highly infected holes.

“It looks like your dog was bitten by a snake,” the veterinarian concluded. “Don’t you live in the city?” he asked, scratching his head.

Relieved that we finally knew what had happened to the little guy, Jennifer and I both sighed and replied “Yes,” giggling in response to the totally unexpected diagnosis.

“Bernal Heights, to be precise,” I told our physician. “From what we understand, there are snakes crawling throughout the neighborhood.”

Exploring Our Erogenous Zones

The Schalits have no immediate plans to move to Marin.

Desktop Rockers Be Gone

Can you remember what its like to just hang out and listen to music? Not at your desk, in your car, or on your iPod, but on the couch, on a weekend afternoon, with a friend, or a lover.

Imagine playing records back to back, for several hours, as your ears drift in and out of changes in albums, interspersed by comments about what you’re listening to, and long, deep yawns.

So we spent our Saturday, comfortably nestled in the living room of a sleepy vacation rental near the Pacific ocean, three hours north of San Francisco. No hippies, all reggae.

Youth Are Getting Restless

Sheinkin Situationism, June 2007.

The New Jewish Left

Israel has become ‘normalized’ within Diaspora identity, (as it is for Israelis) even though the country may no longer be considered central to what it means to be religiously Jewish. From this context stems the freedom to adopt the progressive positions espoused by peace and justice oriented Israel advocacy organizations such as Brit Tzedek v’Shalom and Jewish Voice for Peace.

Along with this normalization of pro-Israel identity for Diaspora Jews has come an increasing unwillingness to refrain from criticizing the Jewish state. Where Diaspora critics of Israeli policies were once silenced by accusations that they were self-hating Jews, they now fight back by referencing the lively debate on the same policies in Israel itself. 

- Excerpted From "Everything Falls Apart", my contribution to the forthcoming anthology of new Jewish progressive writings, Righteous Indignation. (Jewish Lights, 2008.)

Watch Your Step

It’s a minefield out there.

1980s version.

1960s edition.

Book Report

A short excerpt from "Changing Partners: America or Europe?", the fifth chapter of my forthcoming book, Israel vs Utopia:

To many Jews and Israelis, however ideologically inclined, the charge of colonialism became a symptom of a much larger European about face that expressed itself in a deepening of both east and western European relations with the Arab world, an increase in Muslim immigration to France and the United Kingdom, and the routinization of Europe as the number one foreign site of Palestinian revolutionary violence.

Transpiring to the backdrop of the previous decades’ final regional colonial divestitures by France and the United Kingdom, and Europe thus becomes the right-wing Jewish caricature that it is portrayed to be today: the primary breeding ground of “Islamo-left” anti-Semitism, irrefutable proof that outside of Israel, America is the only place a Jew can truly be safe, if not call, however uncomfortably, home.

Terminal Preppies

The only known ‘band’ photo: Christal Methodists, SF Weekly cover pic, 1999. Found on an old hard drive yesterday evening.

No Future

In his highly provocative Only Pinter Remains, Terry Eagleton argues that the utopian impulse in British literature has died. Tracing this tradition from playwright Howard Pinter all the way back to Blake and Shelley, for those not automatically inclined to ascribe left sentiment to the authors Eagleton assembles for this article’s canon, the op-ed, published in Saturday’s Guardian, is a marvelous example of how to encounter politics within culture.

Though Eagleton could (and should) definitely be upbraided for the limited catalogue of ‘approved’ authors that he provides, (and his characterization of the ideological pliability of immigrant writers), Eagleton does a brilliant job of indicting several contemporary authors for aligning themselves too closely with the powers that be. His damning appraisal of Salman Rushdie’s fate, and Christopher Hitchens’ post-9/11 political trajectory hits particularly hard.